Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo nominated as CIA Director

Pompeo was elected to the 4th District congressional seat during the tea party wave of 2010 and easily won re-election this month. (AP)

WICHITA, KS (AP) -

President-elect Donald's Trump's nomination of U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo for the top CIA job would put up for grabs the congressional seat in the south-central district.

Pompeo says in a statement that he is "honored and humbled" to accept the nomination, calling the decision to leave his congressional seat difficult. He says the opportunity to lead the CIA is a call to service he could not ignore.

Before starting the job, Pompeo would have to be confirmed by the Senate.

Pompeo was elected to the 4th District congressional seat during the tea party wave of 2010 and easily won re-election this month.

A special election would be required to fill the post. There is no primary.

Pompeo is a member of the House intelligence committee, which oversees U.S. intelligence gathering efforts. In 2014, he was appointed to the House Select Benghazi Committee to probe the 2011 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

He enrolled as a teenager at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. and graduated first in his class in 1986. According to biographical information on his House web site, Pompeo served as a "cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall."

Pompeo is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was editor of the Harvard Law Review.

After college, he returned to south-central Kansas where his mother was from. He set up Thayer Aerospace and was its chief executive officer for more than 10 years. Later he was president of Sentry International, a company that sold equipment for oil fields and manufacturing.

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